Talk:Spam blacklist/Archives/2007-02

Please do not post any new comments on this page. This is a discussion archive first created in February 2007, although the comments contained were likely posted before and after this date. See current discussion or the archives index.

gravinaoggi.it

recurring spam on it.wp, from different addresses, in recent times associated with ilmarefilm.org on similar geographical pages of Puglia region. See, for instance, [12] and [13] (never empty log). They stop when receiving a "spam" warning, then they come back a few days after. Gianfranco 23:38, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Why? It's one of the most popular website about Electric Light Orchestra!

emptynosesyndrome.org

Attached non-notable EL's to at a handful of nose-related articles from at least four different anon IPs. Warned numerous times, blocked during the latest run, but I suspect they'll be back. The warnings aren't taking much effect. --Mdwyer 05:09, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Hugeurl.com

The following discussion is closed:done

Recently mentioned on Digg, this is a site that works in practically the same way as Tinyurl, an already blacklisted site. No spamming (yet), but just attempting to preempt any attacks. Logical2u 21:01, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

myscreensavers.net

Has been spamming multiple articles over the last month with links to 'free' wallpaper (a front for an ad-push install). Links to samples: [29], [30], [31], [32], [33], [34], [35], [36], [37], [38], [39], [40], [41], [42]. Can dig up another 30 or so if needed. The additions are sometimes from single purpose accounts, but mostly from ever-changing IPs, several of which have been blocked as open proxies. There are several other 'front' sites which redirect to 'products' from this one, but I have not sorted those out yet - this one seems to be their main site. Please let me know if I can provide additional information. Kuru 20:23, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Done -- on a related note, A. B. can you please leave us permanent links to the wikiproject spam pages. That was when this is archived, and if any questions are asked, we won't have to dig through wikiproject spam archives. Just click the "Permanent link" button on the toolbox, before going to give the url to the evidence. Thanks! Eagle 101 23:55, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Has it been spammed by more then one IP range? Might be useful to set the auto-block there and see if the spam stops. Eagle 101 16:18, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

It's not only the spam. all-car-photos.com takes many articles and pictures from the de.wikipedia and put them under it's own copyright. Look at this: [130]. --62.226.13.155 22:21, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

The user has been rude and devious, and has often removed other external links before adding his own. -en:user:Will Beback 07:48, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

The IPs appear to be originating from the same company. 64.33.177.170 is static, and can be blocked without fear of collateral. The other I can't tell. Are those the only two IPs that the problem is coming from as of now? Eagle 101 16:56, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Those are the only IPs that I've noticed so far. -Will Beback 19:07, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Ok in that situation, perhaps just block both IPs with account creation disabled? Then there would be no need to add the sites to the blacklist, as long as they don't switch IPs agian. Cheers! Eagle 101 19:43, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

I am reluctant to blacklist the two client domains unless we see more of their links, in which case, I'm inclined to first send their owners e-mails. They're paying Rayvan to take care of them and they probably have no idea of what's going on. I'm mindful of two things:

The rumor that the big search engines sometimes consult our blacklist when compiling their blacklists.

Clear cut cross wiki spam, with multiple IPs to boot. Consider this Done (some of the evidence above might be the same diff, (if more then one link was added or whatnot, but there are 22 instances of this) Eagle 101 20:14, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm going to do this based on the widespread abuse of 5 different ranges, and some unknown number of socks. Looks like the only way to stop this fully is by blacklisting. I will blacklist only those that have been added to wikipedia as part of this spamming campaign. The other 6 we will wait and see. Eagle 101 15:48, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Quite clear link (clearly part of the original spam campaign. Again due to the number of IPs used in cases related to this, I'm going to blacklist this. Can anyone figure our a rough estimate of domains that this company has? This could be a long term problem. DoneEagle 101 19:59, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

topmeds10.tu1.ru

Repeatedly linkspammed to mulitple articles by multiple IP addresses. Compared to axweb0.org reported above, many of the same articles are targeted and the IPs are in the same Russian ISP. Here are a few of the many, many expamples:

In addition, I've seen lots of linkspamming containing "topmeds", so perhaps any domain containing that word can be blacklisted (don't know if that's feasible, though). Edgar181 21:20, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Hi, I add ronago.net on en.wikipedia, but was only an information, because in some other wiki edition appear another link like "lombardia.indettaglio....." that link is SPAM!! the owner have used wiki only for have visibility and sale publicity space, he dont know nothing about my village. Ronago.net is pay and made by young people of Ronago. The istitutional link in italy is standard "comune.ronago.co.it" will be online very soon, infact I made a page only with this link, and I will provvide to substitute when is up. If You want to verify what I'm writing, visit an old version of it.wikipedia.org/ronago TEo!

Still more spam on Wikipedia from VsiSoftware.com, Inc. and Insureme.com

Additions: Not done

Business English Solutions International, LLC spam

Spammed numerous articles using several accounts, then made legal threats and personal attacks once links were reverted and accounts warned. Now -- a few weeks later, they're came back with a new account and reinserted a link.[193].

Currently this has been spammed by one IP and two users. I would assume that these are all on the same IP. I do not see evidence that this has been spammed by more then one IP range. If this were to be on more then one IP range I could see the need to blacklist this. I would just block the IP range, and disable account creation. That should mitigate the problem. Cheers! Eagle 101 16:55, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

OK, well if I can't get this blacklisted, then can you take care of this on en:wikipedia? I'm not an admin.

Thanks for your help in fixing this -- I put hours into tracking this down, documenting it and cleaning it up. --18:20, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Sure, I assume it is the IP that needs to be blocked. Eagle 101 18:24, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

For now this is being dealt with on the english wikipedia. Both of the named accounts have been blocked, and discussion on en:WP:ANI, is ongoing about the IP. Cheers! Eagle 101 19:03, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

For now... Not done unless there are problems that can't be dealt with on the english wikipedia. Eagle 101 16:10, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Currently 3 times it was spammed, I am keeping an eye out for more. Eagle 101 22:09, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

I have not found anymore as of yet. Eagle 101 16:43, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

I assume this will be Not done. Cheers! Eagle 101 21:34, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

lesfilsdodin.com

Official site of some recently-created french en:Ásatrú believers organisation. Site is of questionable relevance as a link on Wikipedia and has been agressively added to a number of articles by several IPs and logged-in users with no or few other contributions ([197], [198], [199]). Some of these users also engaged in vanity editing ([200]) and edit-warring with several well-known users and/or administrators over the issue ([201]). On top of that, this organisation is suspected of links with the far-right — which is not a problem as such — but someone introducing itself as its president threatens with legal action against even the discussion of said links on the talk page. GL 16:36, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

truegamesreviews.info

looks like the IP's are on 3 seperate ranges, a link search turned up 4 more that I then removed. ([206][207][208][209]) By the looks of this this may be a problem that can be addressed by the blacklist. There currently are 0 links in the English wikipedia to this site, (others I have not checked), the search to the english wiki can be done here. Hope this helps! Eagle 101 04:09, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Without blacklisting, it appears this link is no longer being spammed into the english wikipedia. Eagle 101 15:53, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Not done - there is no spamming of this domain as of today (no links in the special linksearch). If it starts up again, let us know here. Eagle 101 19:36, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, does not look like this has any use on the english wikipedia, (as shown here, is linked 7 times, those can be modified to allow the pages to save with ease). A blacklist here to stop that IP would probably be of use at this point. I don't see where any harm would be done by a blacklisting. Eagle 101 20:13, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

On second thought, you could simply protect the article. (a semi-protect, or if it is really bad, full-protect) for a few days or weeks. The IPs adding this are as follows, the link is to the diff of the IP, making the change:

Currently looks like the problem has been resolved for the time being using a semi-protection. Eagle 101 00:15, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

I semi-protected the article while this was being considered. I thought the spam blacklist was preferred to semi-protection in these circumstances. However, we'll see if the anon comes back once the semi-protection expires.-Gadfium 02:55, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

This is Not done, as it seems like things are back under control (even after the semi-protect expired). Eagle 101 05:41, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Being spammed to theultimatecomment.com 's wiki for the past few weeks despite its being a dead link.. Thought I might pass it on. The links refer to weird sublocations and are accompanied by "Soda and cream of tartar when these substances burn or decay the carbon." --212.2.176.17 15:05, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

This is Not done until its actually spammed into a foundation wiki or wikis. Eagle 101 17:33, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Removals: Done

awardspace.com

A whole hosting provider is blacklisted and it has some useful websites hosted on it (for example, adventurelt.awardspace.com, which is a Lithuanian website on adventure games with a database of such games and could not be linked to from Lithuanian wikipedia as of now due to this restriction; the issue was already raised in the Lithuanian wikipedia, 1). If there are spam websites hosted on awardspace, they should be blacklisted separately instead of blacklisting whole awardspace. Lietwiki 17:25, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

I cannot find the discussion on that page, could you give a link to the specific version of the page? - Andre Engels 14:03, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Attempt to include the link as a source: [211] (see where "]" is added), the person who added it asks why it does not show up (in the comment of the edit). In [212] another person asks why is it impossible to link to sources because of the anti-spam filter. Later I did explain them more about how the anti-spam filter works and, as I do also disagree with the blacklisting of "awardspace.com" for the reasons specified above, I asked here to remove it from blacklist. Lietwiki 11:21, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

kunstmarkt.com

Has been blocked upon a request saying that it were a commercial site (a lie), and there were too many links to it (too many being about 50) in the Wikipedia.

This is not a commercial site. It exists for more than a decade, and its content was always free, is free, and will remain free, as one of the makers told me. Unlike typical commercial news and newspaper portals, they never expire/delete their aticles. There is no comparable source (by size and depth of coverage) about art, artwork, artists, museums, exhibitions, etc. online in German language.

Imho, only about 50 links from the WP to a site having hundreds of thousends of free articles on paintings, artists, etc. etc. is really not too much. Disallowing such links completely, appears insane to me. --Purodha Blissenbach 11:02, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Usually I agree with Purodha Blissenbach, in this case I strongly disagree. Kunstmarkt purpose is to sell art. The pictures there are not free, but under copyrights. It's a sad situatiion that we have such strong copyright-laws on photographs of art and I understand the problems wiki-contributers have. Nevertheless, Wikipedia is not a link-container, therfore kunstmarkt has to stay on the list. --Hedwig in Washington 09:53, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Kunstmarkt.com does not sell art. They do sell advertizing space to art exhibitors, galleries, and the like. Of course what they publish is copyrighted, and free. This is the exact same situation of Wikipedia articles, which are copyrighted, and free. So where's the problem? --Purodha Blissenbach 10:31, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

P.S. even if they were selling art, what is the problem linking to one or another of their excellent artists bios, which are free, and granted to stay as long as the Website exists? --Purodha Blissenbach 10:31, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

It's a 100% commercial site, that's what I say. I really have a big problem with commercial website that have 50 entries on one(!) Wikipedia. We do not provide advertising webspace. That's not what I'm working for. And you are a hardcore-wikipedian, you know how much crap is already in "our" articles. We need to maintain high standards, otherwise we'll be nothing else than myspace, ebay or the yellow pages. Regarding the bios, it's our work to write an article about an artist, not generating a stub in the Wikipedia and linking to external information that we should provide. --Hedwig in Washington 11:10, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree on better having own quality articles in the Wikipedias than links. When there is no one (up to now) who writes such an article, or when there is another ressource having (a considerable amount of) material for further reading, an image galley, etc., then there is no point in not linking to it - wether or not the site offering it is considered commercial by some or not - as long as its content is free, reliable, and good. If we are not even ruling links out because target sites are doublessly commercial, such as http://mircosoft.com/ or http://ibm.com/ or http://daimler-chrysler.com/ , even less can we generally forbid links to pages which are non-commercial, or at best dispudely commercial sites. We DO provide advertizing space. Recently there was an advert of a record company to be found on the top of all pages of all wikimedia foundation supported wikies, alongside with an advert fo the Wikimedia Foundation. Also noone, or at least not me, would not put any blame on you, if you did not suggest http: /kunstmarkt.com/ pages for further or supplementary reading in articles authored by you. But your intent to disallow the same for all other authors of all Wikimedia wikies, based on personal prejudice as it appears to me, is counterproductive and detrimental to the value of Wikipedia as a ressource for free information. --Purodha Blissenbach 12:49, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

The good news is, that both of us try to improve quality. The microsoft/daimler/whatsoever-links are not good examples. That's different. Maybe you have a look on the DE-Wikipedia where I deleted all most of the kunstmarkt links. You'll see that most of the articles are stubs or better stubs. The people go the easy way and that's another point. You are right, prejudice is counterproductive, but how's free of that. My decision to ask for further blocking is based on WP:WEB, the articles where the link has been and the website kunstmarkt itself. I do not try to fight for an old decision I made to have look like I was right then. It's not that I want to harm the kuinstmarkt guys or Wikipedia. For Wikipedia I try to do all I can to make it a better one. --Hedwig in Washington 13:32, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Reading the above arguments makes me regard this blocking even more questionable. You didn't only remove "most of the kunstmarkt links" - you deliberately cut off each and every editors freedom to insert such links in any of the wikimedia wikies. Removing links to (usable) external ressources from stub articles serves the purpose of excessively downgrading the use of such articles for everyone. Readers now do not even find wanted information elsewhere. Editors of little knowledge willing to improve the article are deprived easy access to some of the information they should need to know. Editors who did not have the ressources to make a better article, but want to keep a note for others, likely feel set back when their effords are being wasted, and maybe leave the Wiki again in frustration. As I said, I don't mind when such a link is removed when it became superfluous after a stub article evolved, and the place a link points to isn't offering additonal information any more. I do mind global blocking of a useful ressource for everyone on every wiki based upon no real ground. Blocking is a countermeasure to linkSPAMming, i.e. excessive and/or unrelated, likely automated, mass-insertion of links. It has to be a last-resort type of decision, because otherwise editors freedom would be hampered. With about 50 articles in a half million+ having links to pages of a specialized thematic website of comparable size (332600 pages according to Google) I think you cannot speak of masses of links, and you never sugested, these links were made automatically, for ill reasons, nor that they were totally useless. So removing the blackmailing and restoring editors choices is imho the only sensitive solution. --Purodha Blissenbach 16:02, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Kunstmarkt.com is a news site. There is no organised spam from this site to be found. --88.76.209.112 23:30, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

The total ammount of articles is not an argument to block or leave it alone. I would agree on the stub use, but the result will be that the stub stays a stub. There will be no effort to improve, that is what I've learned in the Wikipdia so far. Create a stub, slam a few links into it and forget it. That's how it goes. And the Internet is no the only source we can use, there are still books around! I really don't think that somebody will leave the Wikipedia if one website is blocked. Nobody who is interested in Wikipedia work would do that. Every(!) possible information from this site has to be in the article and not on external websites. There is no need to allow a website for selling art on the Wikipedias. I'm sorry for any hardship that may occure here or there, the greater good is the Wikipedia itself. We are running in circles. --Hedwig in Washington 07:01, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

This is not a website for selling art, even though Hedwig in Washington keeps repeating that. Even it it was, this is not a cause for blocking. The opinion, editors were lazy, is not a valid argument for blocking a web site. There is no proof of SPAMming, not even a potential for suspiction therof. All there is, is a personal prejudice of a single user, who, so it appears to me, wants to use the power of blacklisting as an educational measure against disliked editors. Let's suggest Hedwig in Washington to make articles better instead of calling for unjustified site blocks. --Purodha Blissenbach 02:22, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree; this should be removed. The spam blacklist should be specifically for spamming, not a repository of every commercial site on the web. Commercial sites that aren't being spammed should be included or not included in the normal manner---by just editing the pages, or talking on talk pages if there's a disagreement. --Delirium 07:40, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Done Upon discussing with other users, we have decided to remove for now, but keep a close eye on it. If there's any sign of spamming, this address will be blacklisted again immediately. Redux 20:52, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

www.w9rh.org

Please unblock www . w9rh . org . I have an article that links to referenced material using citeweb. It worked earlier today, subsequent edits not even concerning this URL now return blocked. I don't know why it was blocked but the site is legit 209.225.111.86 23:02, 18 January 2007 (UTC) User:Anonym1ty

I assume this is meant to be DoneEagle 101 21:01, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

blog.goo.ne.jp/maxikon2006/

This website is a useful source of information, not spam. Please remove it from the blacklist.Everton 10:26, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

I see it on the blacklist, but I can't tell why its on the blacklist. I assume it would be because of multiple wiki spamming, but I don't see the entry in the log. Eagle 101 20:16, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

www.ohs.150m.com

This is the legitimate home page of a legitimate high school. I don't know why it's blocked, maybe an issue with the hosting service, but I haven't been able to complete my edits to the school's wiki article because it contains a link to the school's website, which is a most necessary external link. Oknazevad 20:13, 17 January 2007 (UTC) (sorry, didn't realize I wasn't logged in the first time.)

Because of edits like this one, 150m.com has been blacklisted. I haven't made a decision yet - I'll get back to this later if noone else beats me to it. - Andre Engels 13:59, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Andre the site 150m.com has multiple subdomains, each operated by different people. Blocking the whole site blocks all of those. Can't we just block by subdomain without blocking an entire domain? I ran across a user removing links to other subdomains based on the blacklist here, that are actually useful articles about a subject of an article on wikipedia. Thanks. Wjhonson 21:11, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

wiener-gasometer.at

The following discussion is closed:done

Hello! I have uploaded some photos of the Gasometer in Vienna at the Commons of Wikipedia and wanted to add this photographs to the relevant pages on other language sites of Wikipedia. It was not my intention to produce spam. Please remove the URL from the Blacklist. I wont add a weblink to the URL on new image-descriptions any more and I am extremely sorry that I have done this. You will find on the website a non-commercial academic/scientific documentation of the Gasometer in Vienna. Greetings, Andreas Pöschek Andreas.poeschek 00:10, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Please remove this domain from the list. It is completely absurd to have this non-commercial site blacklisted. Today I was adding an entry to the Jean Nouvel list of works in the English Wikipedia, when suddenly I was transfixed by this spam filter unexpectedly blocking my edit, forcing me, in order to be able to save my contribution, to delete a perfectly legitimate link to a page from this domain (one showing illustrative photos and info on another of Nouvel's works), a link that was already there as part of the previous version, and it was there for a good purpose; it was not something I was adding in my edit, but I was inexplicably forced to remove that link because otherwise this automated filter bot wouldn't allow me to save a new version of the article. That was just crazy, and very frustrating and annoying. You want to have a spam filter to "protect" Wikipedia, that's OK, but please make sure its blacklist entries make sense and do not actually damage Wikipedia by forcing editors to remove existing legitimate links in order to be able to save their contributions. Uaxuctum 12:53, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

ueuo.com

I have a website as a subdomain of ueuo.com and want to add a link on my Wikipedia user page. Ueuo.com is part of the Free Web Hosting Area which provides free hosting space and it doesn't spam as far as I know. I've been using it for a while. --Jingshen 09:03, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

www.gabrielleray.150m.com

This link and its sublinks was blacklisted, and the related links have been removed from articles. It contains very useful information about older English and American musicals and persons connected with the theatre. Can it be reinstated, please? -- 66.65.114.133 19:44, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

The whole domain has been blacklisted becuase of edits like [this one. If that particular link is useful, perhaps ask for it to be whitelisted on the respective wiki. For the english wiki it would be en:MediaWiki:Spam-whitelist. If you need it for another wiki, just ask here, and I can point you in the right direction. Cheers! Eagle 101 19:51, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

See my remark above on another 150m.com subdomain. As I pointed out there and as other people have remarked, blacklisting the entire domain removes useful content. Is there not a way to blacklist by subdomain? If so, I'd like to request the domain be whitelisted and just those offending subs be black. Wjhonson 21:13, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Estopa.com

DoneFixed. It was blocked because of an overly broad block intended for opa.com. - Andre Engels 09:00, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Removals: Not done

Zorpia

www.zorpia.com

Kindly remove Zorpia.com from the wikipedia blacklist. Zorpia is an excellent social networking site with many useful groups from around the world which afford people of diferent cultures to get to know each other better. Also thanks to Zorpia's unlimited photo sharing feature, users get to "see" other cultures as well.

I tried adding www.zorpia.com/group/karachi_scene to the Wikipedia Karachi page but i am getting an error message prompting me to request that www.zorpia.com be removed from the wikipedia blacklist first.

Please verify the above for yourself, and remove www.zorpia.com from your blacklist. I don't know why it was blacklisted.

Best Regards & thanks, Imran.

A Zorpia article was spammed to the English Wikipedia; it was sent to the Articles for Deletion process for deletion. In the course of searching Google for references to establish notability, we learned that the site was tied somehow spamming online drug sales -- see the AfD's talk page for details and links. --A. B.(talk) 21:37, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

AfD's talk page (cited above) quotes Google search results that start from index 700! Even Wikipedia itself appears to be linked to 'online drug sales' using this method! Why not mention the 100's of other links including news stories, articles, links to major record labels that DONT mention online drug sales. This seems to be a very 'selective' form of proof I'm afraid.

I assume then that this is Not doneEagle 101 16:14, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Middlesell

\.middlesell\.com

My name is Jared Fausnaught and I propose that this be removed from the Spam blacklist. I am one of the managers for Middlesell.com. Our website is not a spam site, it is a student portal. Please see for yourself.

Also, I would like to know why this was originally added here in the first place.

Not done Based on the problems with the link being spammed in, I assume that taking it off of this list is not possible. If there are parts of this website that can be used, just request it to be whitelisted on the wiki where the link is of use. They might whitelist a small section of the website, if it can be shown to be of use. Eagle 101 16:16, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

TVRage.com

I requested this a couple months ago to be removed from the Blacklist.[213] I thought the original request was laughable and unfair.[214]. His response was "Spammed on a daily basis to lots of articles, its owner has also admited to spamming it." It was spammed? All articles with links to the site were completely relevant, and had just as much right to be in the article as the TV.com links. I thought the purpose of the lniks were to add other sites that gave more about it's subject. Just because TVRage was an article that has been deleted off of Wikipedia (something I disagreed at the time, but now that I understand the policies more clearly see that the site wasn't notable, and didn't meet en:WP:Web. I don't think that should decide whether or not the site is a "spam" site or not. The links weren't added on a daily basis. To "lots of articles"? So? Unless they were irrelevent, I don't see a big issue that couldn't be discussed on the Talk Page. The "owner admitted spamming it"? Um, that guy wasn't an owner. He was just affiliated with the site. Right here- h t t p : / / t v r a g e . c o m / p r o f i l e s / J o h n Q . P u b l i c / b l o g s / ? v t i m e = 2 0 0 6 1 1 2 2 (remove spaces) you can see that he left. He was shortly banned from Wiki, and is no longer associated with the site. I see no issue with him. This site isn't constantly spammed. I admit to adding a couple links to sites with no links at all, so I thought it could improve the article at anycase. (I discuss on Talk Pages now when it comes down to External Links). I really want the opinions of others, not a simple "REJECTED" See here where it was requested. I have see where it was. I read it. Links to two articles where an indef. blocked user spammed isn't a very good excuse. --Linalu24 20:06, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

I wholeheartedly agree with you that TvRage should be removed from the blacklist or added to the whitelist (either way the result would be the same). But to add to your argument, you should indicate specific articles that would benefit from information from TvRage. Also a TvRage article should now be created seeing as how TvRage has been climbing in web traffic rank according to its alexa listing (http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?url=tvrage.com). 129.7.254.33 23:32, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Linalu, I think a better place to rehash a dispute that occured on particular Wikipedia is to take it back to that Wikipedia. I suggest you open the discussion at en:Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Spam and get consensus there. Also, in a previous post, you mentioned you were active on some other Wikipedias? You might have people on those other Wikipedias leave comments on your other user talk pages, then include those talk page links en:Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Spam remarks. --A. B.(talk) 01:51, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Thank you both for your responses. I'll definately look at the WikiProject Spam page. --Linalu24 21:34, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

I assume for now this is Not doneEagle 101 16:20, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

fremderfreiheitsschacht.de

It's a association for people of handicrafts. Nothing else. Why is it on the blacklist? 85.2.29.76 07:14, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

blog.mypace.com/eliroth

I've been using this link on the page for Hostel Part 2 since June 2006 without incident. I understand that myspace or myspace blog links may be irrelevant in a lot of cases but I think in this case, the director's blog on his official myspace is a reliable source.

Not done just use the whitelist. Eagle 101 20:40, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

www.telefanatic.com

The following discussion is closed:not done

This link relates to an italian portal dedicated to tv serials. In this site an editorial board writes daily news, spoilers, episode guides... There's also an Italian database with files dedicated to each tv serials with cast & crew infos, curiosity about dubbing and actors etc. Furtheremore there are lots of goodies dedicated to this tv genre: podcast, polls, forum, galleries, e-cards, videos (trailers), fanzine and newsletter.

In conclusion, this website allows wikipedia users to find more info on their favorite tv serial, so it is a useful link in topic like:

If some parts of it are ok, then perhaps request whitelisting of the link on it wiki? Eagle 101 22:27, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

That site was spammed for 2 hours by 4 different IPs in about 100 articles on it.wiki and was blacklisted to stop them (as block was useless, they came back from another IP). I'm not going to remove it. If you want it whitelisted on it.wiki, ask the local sysop; I'm no longer one of them (note that the spammed link was just "www.telefanatic.com", so I don't think this will happen). Marking as not done. --.anaconda 23:19, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

www.ingenieur-verlag.de/

This link relates to a german web portal for engineers (www.ingenieur-verlag.de/). The website contains information about project management, controlling, quality assurance, etc. It offers articles and PDF files about the above-named topics for free download. The website is hosted by a german publishing house. I see no reason for listing the website on the blacklist. --141.113.85.21 09:26, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

The reason the link was blacklisted was because of this. Hope that helps. Eagle 101 16:14, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

ACK, but there are still articles at de.wikipedia.org containing links to www.ingenieur-verlag.de, see e.g.[216] "Weiterführende Links" -> Link:"Einführung in Multiprojektmanagement". Shouldn't it be removed? --09:05, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

whale.to

This is not a commercial site. Contains a lot of valuable information, with many external links and medical references from various sources. Lots of information on vaccination and various diseases. The site contains references needed for the pages en:Tetanus and fr:Tétanos. -- Bwass

Looks like this was added a long time ago, needless to say we don't have any logs on when this was added or why. My assumption would be that it was added in in cross wiki spam. And what you are suggesting there looks to be adding it to multiple wikis. Are those the only wikis that need the link? If so I would suggest asking to have specific sections of the site added to the whitelists of the respective wikis. They can whitelist just the pages that are needed for references. Again without logs I really can't tell you why it was added in the first place, my assumption is that someone spammed it across multiple wikis, and or did so using multiple IPs. Cheers! Eagle 101 03:28, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

I'd never heard of this site, so I spent about 10 minutes looking at the site and doing a quick Google search. Here's what I found:

First, take a look at the home page, scrolling all the way through it -- it looks very POV. Then a random sampling of pages:

whale.to/m/map.html "Medical Mind Control"

"The methods used by Allopathic Monopoly to suppress the truth. Mostly propaganda---lies, hypnotism and Fearmongering. Aka Mind Control"

whale.to/w/nat.html "Natural Healing"

"80% of my patients were well just after doing my thorough bowel cleansing program."

whale.to/a/medical_mafia.html "The Medical Mafia"

"The worldwide Elite (Boss) of Allopathy. Aka The Drug Trust, Medical Monopoly, Cartel or Industry. Think IG Farben and Medical Fascism. Only the top people in Allopathy know the whole truth on Allopathic medicine, and covert-vaccine agendas."

A Google search on "whale.to wikipedia" turns up:

whale.to/a/wikipedia.html "The Great Lie of Wikipedia: "the....encyclopedia that anyone can edit.""

Problems with whale.to have included: relentless spamming by the owner; highly POV; copyright violations; off-wiki attacks. Almost all the good content on that site is scraped anyway, often in violation of copyright. Please, no. Just zis Guy, you know? 18:35, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Suite101.com

Some of the writers in some of the topics on Suite101 have legitimate reasons to be cited. For example, one long gone movie columnist actually interviewed legit pros, and I published the only article on Loblaw's w:Sesame Beginnings licensing after Sesame Workshop issued a press release. I agree that yes, a lot of the time people post on Wikipedia only to drive traffic to the Suite's payment-per-2000-views structure. However, there are some legit writers there that don't do that, and let other Wikipedians link to their content. -- Zanimum 19:38, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

An additional information: we changed our writer payment model as of January 24, 2007. Writers do not directly benefit from page impressions in the future, (see Suite101's recruitment and payment terms) which was cited as one of the chief reasons when we were blacklisted. Bergerpeter 17:28, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

See the following for historical background on Suite101.com and its relationship to Wikipedia.

I copied the following from http:// www. suite101.com/writer_faq as of today:

"How long will it take before I start to earn money as a freelance writer?"

"You start earning and accruing money right away, but how much depends on many factors including the rate at which you post new content, the quality of the articles, the aptness of your titles, the amount of promotion you do, the speed at which the search engines index and rank you... but you are paid your share of ad revenues on your material, in full, monthly."

I really see no reason why Suite101 should be on the blacklist. The site is editorially controlled, reliable, and Wikipedia contributors acknowlege the referential value of many of its articles again and again. Our writers do get paid, and I believe that is appropriate for quality writing. If I understand correctly, Wikipedia is now adding rel="nofollow" tags to all external links (which I think is a great decision); that removes any incentive for people to abuse Wikipedia for search engine reasons. When Wikipedia contributors base their Wikipedia articles on Suite101 content, I strongly feel they should be able to refer to the original source of reference. Bergerpeter 17:16, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

There is currently a debate about possibly reversing the nofollow decision in the future, perhaps in several months after the current large SEO contest. It's unclear where that discussion's going. Jimbo Wales has caught flack from many editors about this decision both from outside and inside Wikipedia (personally I support his decision). --A. B.(talk) 18:54, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Our site is an editorially monitored writer network. Suite101 has tens of thousands of unique articles and currently 250 active Feature Writers. There has been no systematic spamming other than a few of our writers inserting links to their own articles. This has been solved and those writers won't do it again, since it was done in ignorance. The idea of the spam blacklist is to keep off persistent link spammers, not references to highly useful material or to ban sites that earn money and share revenues with writers; it would only be fair and in the interest of Wikipedia's rules to remove suite101.com from the spam blacklist. Bergerpeter 17:18, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

The site was blacklisted because someone promoted it. Your terms of use actually incorage people to link to items that they write. See the original blacklist request here. Sorry. Eagle 101 22:15, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

I've seen many examples of WP:OR issues from material referenced from this blacklisted site. This is in addition to the spam-linking which was regularly occurring before the blacklist was placed. I too I support the decision of Jimbo Wales based on the spam concerns. 71.111.138.207 01:36, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

www.chiquitania.com

Please unblock this site. It is a non-profit, non-commercial site that exists only as an online resource for information regarding the Chiquitania, a geographic region of eastern Bolivia. I am trying to submit an article on this same region (none exists as yet on Wikipedia), and the Web site referred to is an invaluable source for further information. Thanks. --User ID: 3303832 11:47, 20 January 2007 (CST)

It looks as if this was a problem on the Dutch Wikipedia with a Dutch tour operator spamming links to the chiquitania.com's links page. This happened after his own company's link was blacklisted as persistent spam. His company has a link on that chiquitania.com links page. See Talk:Spam blacklist/Archives/2007/01#chiquitania.com. If the link is not removed from the blacklist here, you can probably get it whitelisted on the English Wikipedia only at en:MediaWiki talk:Spam-whitelist. Other language Wikipedias have similar provisions for whitelisting as well. --A. B.(talk) 05:06, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Not done - just use the whitelist for acceptable cases. Eagle 101 20:42, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

blog.myspace.com

Having trouble seeing how this is considered spam, but it's been recently added to the list, despite being pretty widly used (mostly on en.wikipedia) This site has a large number of user including a substancial number of musicians whose postings here had previouslly made it possible to link to copyrighted matrial this site had direct posting from the origional copyright owners and such was not a violation. There may have been a little spam from some, but the benifits that come from blacklisting this site are vastly outweighed by the problems that are caused... -- (sorry, no username on meta)

I agree. Many celebrities, especially musicians, maintain MySpace pages and blogs, and the English Wikipedia, at least, allows these blogs to be used as sources. --Maxamegalon2000 02:34, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

And I'm now unable to revert vandalism on any page that has a link to a MySpace blog without either going at it one section at a time or deleting the link, and deleting the link would itself be considered vandalism. I'd definitely like to see this hostname removed from the filters. --Psiphiorg (en.wikipedia.org) 19:44, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree with the usefulnes of this site in general, and I'm not aware of any SPAM using it. --Purodha Blissenbach 02:28, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

I've left a comment at his talk page. A small discussion has ensued, but he hasn't commented yet. --Maxamegalon2000 18:27, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, this will mark the first time I disagree with Jimbo on something. MySpace blogs are very useful because they can be first-hand sources from many famous people (who have official MySpace pages). Will someone please whitelist this? --Liface 07:12, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Currently link articles in en:wikipedia:

current list of articles that include the link *.blogs.myspace.com -- 1 link

current list of articles that include the link *.blogs.myspace.com -- 201 links

I've put the list on a user subpage: en:User:A. B./Sandbox9 to give people a sense of the kinds of linked articles and the quality of the links. It can also serve as a clean-up list. --A. B.(talk) 08:15, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

There's also a discussion about this at WP:Reliable Sources I've like to see this removed from the blacklist. If the authenticity of the MySpace owner is verified, I don't see why this can't be used as citations - 60.240.174.126 10:14, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

I guess this is a final decision then as not only has it been blacklisted the link has just been deleted from Eat Static breaking the reference it was part of which was to a blog on an official MySpace by a recognised authority (band member) - which is normally allowed by policy. I only found out it was blacklisted when I tried to restore it.82.41.98.219 02:23, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Wizardry Dragon has done the same thing to Feeder regarding a MySpaceblog that is the only way to back up the fact that the band raised 62,000 pounds at their gigs for the charity WarChild. I tried to re-add the link but he's blocked it and is definetly vandalism.

I've reverted an edit to the Lance Bass article that included a link to a MySpace blog as a citation, but I had to remove the link and just include the URL as text. I suppose until this site is removed from the blacklist, this is what we will have to do in order to properly cite our sources. --Psiphiorg (en.wikipedia.org) 19:44, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

I cannot understand why official sources are being blacklisted, this must be the single stupidest thing that I have ever seen Wikipedia do. Very confused and disappointed. --210.10.183.24 04:04, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

This a real pain in the ass. If you want to block MySpace images from getting inserted, then blacklist viewmorepics.myspace.com , and not blogs.myspace.com24.52.190.122 01:19, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

We wanted to block myspace blogs, so blogs.myspace.com was exactly right. Thanks for asking, though :-) Myspace sites remain linkable, only the blogs are blocked. Individual blogs which are required as sources can be whitelisted on request, as at the the admin noticeboard. Just zis Guy, you know? 14:11, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, I just tried editing the Kirk Cameron and Julie McCullough articles, in particular the portions that deal with how the former had the latter fired from Growing Pains, which had a citation tag on it. I wanted to add a source so that I could remove the tag, and since McCullough discusses the matter on her MySpace page, I added a bit of material, and the source, but it got automatically reverted. I don't see why this should be so, and I'd like to know what Jimbo's reasoning is on this matter. And as far as reliable sources, well, I would think that McCullough herself is a pretty reliable souce on the matter. 67.82.110.48 02:14, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

A few sites

I came across an article with these external links that weren't links, then viewed the source to see why. They are listed as <nowiki>, and the Talk page has a discussion about them being here because they redirect. However, after clicking the links from an editing preview page, they don't redirect. Regardless of whether we agree with the content of the links, I don't see why they should be blacklisted, since the reason they're blacklisted is not (at least now) the case. Nathanm mn 00:50, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

A news article reports that MSN Messenger is blocking www.scroogle.org. If true, could MSN be importing the spam blacklist? What are the liability implications for the Foundation if a domain is on this list that cannot accurately be described as spam? 216.60.70.68 01:27, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

What reasons? The stated one on the Spam blacklist is wrong. They don't redirect requests from Wikimedia, I tested it. Nathanm mn 02:34, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Nathan, please be aware that any link to these sites on enwiki would be immediately reverted, and any editor repeatedly inserting or re-inserting them would be blocked from editing and most likely permanently banned. This is per ArbCom ruling. Just zis Guy, you know? 14:55, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Why are they still blacklisted though, when they no longer redirect? And technically, they are not spam. --Majorly 14:58, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind. Ashibaka 02:46, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

So basically, there's an ArbCom ruling to censor these links because they disagree with the content? That's what it sounds like to me at least. Nathanm mn 08:02, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

The real reason is that Raul654 thinks I am in the business of stalking young children, but this is false and malicious and therefore libelous. I've never seen any evidence that there was an Arbcom statement on this topic. There is now a page at wikipedia-watch.org/raul654.html that places the blame entirely on Raul. If Arbcom is involved, and someone can provide a citation, I'll be happy to expand that page. --Daniel Brandt 216.60.71.100 19:50, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Very droll. The real reason is that the arbitration committee on en: has ruled that linking to any site which "outs" the real identity of Wikipedia editors, or which contains personal attacks on editors, is a blockable offence. It is my understanding that mr. Brandt wants nothing to do with us, and the feeling is certainly reciprocated. Just zis Guy, you know? 21:18, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

If the outing of Wikipedia editors is illegal, Wikipedia or the individual editors can take legal action. If it is not illegal, there is no reason to block links to his site. Even if we dislike him, giving the appearance of censorship on Wikipedia means he wins. If the redirection thing occurs again, then next to the text links there should be an explanation of why there are no "normal "links. It sure looked like censorship to me, and I'm a Wikipedia fan. -Alexbobp

I agree completely. If an editor's been "outed" on his site, alert them to that fact and let them take action on their own. It's not a reasonable justification for censorship. Nathanm mn 05:37, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Tell that to the arbitration committee on en. Oh, and do remember to use the word censorship - they especially like that, it's always a hallmark of a calm and reasoned request. Just zis Guy, you know? 15:04, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Not done - I'm going to assume that we are not taking these off, if there are arguments for taking them off, please just re-state them again, but since there has been no talk on this recently, I'm going to archive this as not done. Eagle 101 04:12, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

mojeosiedle.pl

Dunno if this is considered 'widespread' but... The address above is a Polish site hosting various forums focused around different local communities in Polish cities of Tró)jmiasto (Tricity. The tagline on some of those reads: "Talk to your neighbour without leaving home.")

Since some of those edits came from one IPS, we blocked the whole subnet, pending addition to the blacklist. --TOR 17:57, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Can you please clarify? Is this a request to add a link to the blacklist? Eagle 101 02:18, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Ok, as I am not sure what is being requested here, this is Not done, feel free to re-post this. Eagle 101 19:50, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

oseculoprodigioso.blogspot.com

Came across this being on the blacklist while trying to edit the Charles Demuth article. The link in the article looks legitimate, as does the site itself -- I'm not sure why it's blacklisted. --24.7.101.196 22:23, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

The link was being spammed across wikis. See this for more info. In fact the link was actually added by the same IP that was spamming the other wikis. (See here) The IP was 81.84.142.19, and it hit 11 wikis with that link (counting the english wikipedia link). Cheers! Eagle 101 22:29, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Hmm, odd. It doesn't look like they're trying to sell anything; maybe just the work of an overenthusiastic site creator? Well, anyway, I'll defer to the admins -- mostly just curious. -24.7.101.196 05:11, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Same here, on French Wikipedia, with Amadeo Modigliani, I don't think it deserve to be blacklisted. Because, non commercial and rich in iconographie. Please, leave it out. Best regards. -- Perky 10:44, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

It was blacklisted because of cross wiki spam, exactly what this list is for :P. If it is suitable on a particular wiki, you can always request that the site, or even specific pages of said site, be whitelisted on your respective local wiki. For example it is en:MediaWiki:Spam-whitelist on the english wikipedia. If you need it for another wiki, just ask here, and I can point you in the right direction. Cheers! Eagle 101 19:58, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Seems harmless, is not selling anything, has a very rich collection of artworks; the fact that the text is Portugese seems immaterial since all that viewers will want to do is look at the artworks. Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't understand why the site should not be available in all languages. Please unblock. --CliffC 20:55, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

No, Eagle, it is not on en whitelist, though there are requests for it to be so! see [225]87.194.23.18 08:23, 16 February 2007 (UTC) Johnbod of en

Not done - request is moved to the whitelist. Eagle 101 19:51, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

geocities.com/nozomsite

This website is real and related and contains real data. Please remove it from the blacklist.

Not done, just request whitelisting if a particular page of the site is indeed useful. Eagle 101 21:39, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Please reconsider.

Please do not modify my comments, as you did above by changing {{notdone}} to {{done}}. I've looked at it again and I stand by what I said above, it was blacklisted for a reason. If you think it will be useful to add a page or two of that site to the english wiki, feel free to request whitelisting of those parts of that site. Eagle 101 20:27, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

iyisozluk.com

Hello my site (iyisozluk.com) is now black list.This site is online Multi language dictionary turkish from other 12 language therefor I'm adding my link to 3 article (dictionary,turkish,turkey) all wiki country sites. I thing this very much links for wikimedia. What can I do now for my site ?

Sory my bad english

And Thanks ...

Looks like this link has been spammed, across multiple wikis, at least that is what I am taking "pan-wiki" spam to mean. From the blacklist log:

\.iyisozluk\.com # Jdforrester # pan-wiki spam

Hope that helps. If there are pages in it that are good and relevent to a particular page, I suggest asking for white listing on that specific wiki. Eagle 101 00:26, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

No reply, so I'm going to assume for now this is Not doneEagle 101 03:10, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Not done - see these two conversations [226] and [227]. If you want to use it on a particular wiki, request it be whitelisted there, though I doubt they will do it. Eagle 101 19:14, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Suite101.com

I tried to add a very helpful article from this site at http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/wisconsin/110633 as a reference to the article en:Mifflin Street Block Party, and was blocked. I've saved the reference without the url, as you can see in the references section (it's currently #3.) I don't know why the link was blacklisted originally but I would really like to be able to use this as a reference, if it won't cause too much trouble. I'm an administrator on enwiki. Thanks... Grandmasterka 08:26, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

The reason why its on the list can be found here. There has been discussion about taking the site off the list, which can be found here. Just make a request at WP:WHITELIST to have your particular page of suite101 allowed. Ie, have the following whitelisted '\bsuite101\.com\/article\.cfm\/wisconsin\/110633'. As you are an admin on enwiki, you could add it to the list yourself. Eagle 101 16:52, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Beside the spam/COI issue, there was also the fact that these are effectively self-published, thus not meeting en:WP:RS and en:WP:RS. The only links whitelisted to my knowledge have been interviews of the subject of the article of the link, based on the exception in the guidelines for citing the subject of an article's work. Within the long sage linked to above, you'll find some discussion as you skim the exchanges. Suite101.com claimed otherwise but this was patently true if you spent several hours on their website as many of us did. --A. B.(talk) 18:24, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Huh. I didn't even know about that whitelisting page. I whitelisted the specific link (just what I needed for the reference.) The article on Suite101 is very comprehensive to me, but I'll try and find better references later... But the article is linked from the main page right now. So, you can disregard this entry. Grandmasterka 19:16, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

this is Not done as whitelisting specific pages appears to the best way for now. Eagle 101 00:32, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Declarationofindependents.net

I'm not sure why it was originally blocked, but the website in question is a useful resource when writing about professional wrestlers who do not receive a great deal of attention on larger websites, and contains a large number of original interviews. In particular, the website hosts an interview that provides a source for information that was removed by administrator Dragons Flight because it was unreferenced. 89.242.160.150 02:03, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

The reason why its blacklisted is because it was constantly spammed by multiple socks and or IPs, see this. If you want to use a specific page of it for a source on an article, feel free to request whitelisting of that page on your respective wiki. Eagle 101 02:17, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

I've done as you suggested, but I do feel that denying access to what is a useful source of information in order to thwart a single rogue editor seems a crude response at best. Thank you for your quick response. 89.242.160.150 02:36, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

hostingphpbb.com

Why is hostingphpbb.com blocked? It's a forum creation site used by thousands of people.

81.106.72.33 21:24, 17 February 2007 (UTC)tarnishedessence Note I moved this request to the bottom Eagle 101 02:18, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Not done It was blacklisted because someone decieded to add this across multiple wikis, in these situations, being added to the list is the only way to stop the spamming. If a particular page of this site is useful on a wiki page, feel free to request whitelisting of the site on your respective wiki. Eagle 101 02:21, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

simone-numismatica-e-storia.blogspot.com

I'm the webmaster of this site. The links they have been inserted without my authorization. I'm removing all links. I pray you to remove the block. I ask this because some artticles of my site have been copied in italian wiki, without my authorization, but with this block, I can't to signal this violation. Thanks ! 84.220.254.87 16:33, 18 February 2007 (UTC) Moved to bottom of page Eagle 101 18:34, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Not done, who spams it is not our concern, the site was spammed across multiple wikis (see here). If you want to report violations, you can simply put in xxx page is a copyright violation of simone-numismatica-e-storia.blogspot.com. Or you can request whitelisting at the italian wiki. Regards Eagle 101 18:39, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

www.xs4all.nl/~wichm

A link to this site is already included in the Abangan article. Due to the URL's inclusion in the blacklist, it's not possible to save edits to the Abangan article without removing that link. I don't particularly want to do that, though, because its inclusion seems entirely legitimate and relevant.

Not done See this for the reason why it was added, if you want it possibly added to the whitelist on en, try asking at en:WP:WHITELIST. Thanks Eagle 101 22:16, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

www.sveti-stefan.net

I was attempting to perform a disambiguation link repair when my edit was not accepted because this link on the page Sveti Stefan is blacklisted. I visited the link and it appears to be a news or information outlet for this locality, and may be a legitimate link.--24.164.200.56 18:22, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Not done - it was blacklisted due to spam by multiple IPs onto multiple wikis. See this for more detail. Eagle 101 20:00, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

gamesff.com

I don't knwo abpout the pother links to this page, but at least the one which was used at the wikipedia-article tetris www.gamesff.com/classic/tetris.html leads to a very good tetris clone which can be played online, so I don' thinkt its spam. -MrBurns 06:32, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Not done Then in that case, request specific whitelisting of that url at the en:WP:WHITELIST. Eagle 101 07:05, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

animals-pictures-dictionary.com

There is alreay a discussion about this site but it is archived...

I am asking someone to take this website out of the spam list.

Enter it and you will see many articles that can be linked from wikipedia. and the most important, none of them is COPIED from wikipedia (accept 2 or 3). the site is working with Australia Zoo if you know it, and I don't think it belongs to the dirty SPAM list...

Not done, looks like it was previously spammed by multiple IP ranges, if you want to use it, please request whitelisting of specific pages of it on your respective wiki. Eagle 101 17:27, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Troubleshooting and problems

artnet.de

please unblock (first of all all magazine-articles): artnet sometimes has excess value, e.g. artnet.de/magazine/features/brauneis/brauneis06-30-06.asp -> great article & songs from the artist. there is no reason to block such an interesting page..!?!! 138.246.7.114 20:37, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Partially done. I have restricted the block to only artnet.de/artist - Andre Engels 11:06, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Why? Because there is sometimes between all the ads maybe an information? That doesn't make sense. --Hedwig in Washington 07:03, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Because it blocks the pages that were spammed before, and not the one that is mentioned here. - Andre Engels 17:27, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

I obey whatever the META Admins decide! I checked that link and it seems to make sense! 8-))) --Hedwig in Washington 02:37, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Sorry no - I still have a problem with [[228]] which is an auction record with pic from 1993 with no advertising & the only pic on the net of this artwork. I have listed it on the en whitelist requests ages ago. The exact page is: wwwDOTartnetDOTde/Artists/LotDetailPage.aspx?lot_id=7F09A16903D9419E - maybe if you can allow "LotDetailPage" items? Johnbod of en 87.194.23.18 08:35, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

This is Done, see this Regards Eagle 101 16:54, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Sledtv.org

Was curious as to what happened to the sledtv.org site, then i saw that it had been blacklisted, did a little poking around and never saw any removals but one and no infractions, warings etc, why was this blacklisted? I believe it should not be, and should be reversed

It was blocked as being one of a series of URLs, added by the same spammer from different IPs. Examples given were [229] and [230]. - Andre Engels 08:22, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

http://ibtimes.com

Chronic spamming by en:User:Dck7777, en:User:Wog7777, and a bit by en:User:70.18.40.105. Total 118 contributions, all linkspam, all took forever and a day to cleanup: after reviewing, every link that proceded pattern http://ibtimes... was linkspam, and has been removed: [231]. However, link with pattern http://www.ibtimes has quite a few valid links: [232]. I'm thinking it likely has something to do with how the link is placed to viewers on the outside vs. how they see them internally. Perhaps you could simply block http://ibtimes: it might be enough to slow the spammer down. -Patstuart 16:07, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

It appears to not be working. I ran a test page, and didn't get any problems: what's more, there were two more spammers added to the list of socks. All come from New York City. Patstuart 19:57, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

itsmarta.com

I am trying to edit the w:Metropolitan_Atlanta_Rapid_Transit_Authority but I am getting a Spam Proection Filter error. It says: 'The following text is what triggered our spam filter: http://www DOT itsmarta DOT com' Please advise; this is the main government site for the transit agency and should not be listed as spam. If you need to reach me I am w:User:Biomedeng on the English wikipedia.68.158.105.112 01:50, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Done, this has been fixed with a minor change in the regex for marta.com. Thanks for letting us know! Cheers! Eagle 101 05:15, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

en:Wikiquote problems

On en:Wikiquote, the spam filter (which I don't recall seeing announced on our project, where I'm a sysop) is actively interfering with our ability to discuss problem content. I ran into it when I tried to move archived deletion discussions to a new logging system, which was blocked because one of the discussions included a blocked HTTP address.

I can understand a spam filter for wiki articles, but not for discussion pages. It is very common for Wikiquotians to include suspicious URLs in deletion discussions, so that we can come to an informed decision, but we've been blindsided by this "improvement". If I'm reading Spam Filter correctly, a user interface for tweaking a project's use is in the "good idea" stage, implying that we need to be MediaWiki hackers to address this problem. As I already have about a year's backlog of maintenance work (none of which includes spam), I'd like to know if there's a simpler solution for us, even if it's only temporary. Can we just turn it off for a while by editing something accessible by sysops (as opposed to developers)? Thanks for any insight. ~ Jeff Q(talk) 15:38, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

No but you can simply replace all instances of http:// with nothing. (just copy to word or what not). This blacklist has been around for quite some time ;). Just remove the domain that was a problem, and archive. Easiest way to do it is to remove http:// infront of the problem links... trust me I have the same problems on en:WT:WPSPAM, a wikiproject that needs an archive every 3 or so days. Cheers! Eagle 101 16:10, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, but I have a real problem with modifying other people's posts without permission and effectively deleting convenient links just because someone not involved in the project decided we can't be trusted to use such links judiciously and appropriately. There is a legitimate reason to discuss suspicious links, and they certainly shouldn't be unilaterally banned from discussions across all projects without discussion or notification of the affected projects. Sorry if I seem a bit snippy, but I get really tired of slipstreamed changes to the MediaWiki environment that no one bothers to announce or justify to the project contributors (or even the sysops!). We have only one developer on our project, Brion, and appealing to him for help is like asking the President for assistance because you have no town councilman, state representative, or senator. It's not like en:Wikiquote is a tiny project; it's the largest Wikiquote (which itself is the 3rd-largest project behind WP and Wiktionary), and is in the top ten Wikimedia sites for Alexa-ranked popularity. We should have a better solution. ~ Jeff Q(talk) 19:21, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Jeff Q, aren't all 700 wikis impacted by this the same way? This general approach seems to be acceptable to most other wikis. The spam blacklist would be a lot harder to process if there was some sort of check to decide what sort of page was being edited. But you certainly could put in such an enhancement request against MediaWiki, I would expect. I must say I'd not vote for it though, as while I do recognise some inconvenience to you, I think that allowing all links on talk pages would leave a very big hole for spammers to drive truckloads of SEO through. If there is some other way to make things easier that might be worth exploring, can you bring it up? The spamlist (and this behaviour) has been around since 2004, right? ++Lar: t/c 20:04, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Jeff, please see your ability to create a w:MediaWiki:Spam-whitelist for En-quote alone. I also disagree with you, like Lar. Futhermore, why do you have such a huge problem with editings others' comments? It is only six characters and is a necessity. One may also argue with you on the fact that they are not project contributors when this is basically the heart of all projects and, therefore, the contributors to this project are contributing on behalf of your project as well. Please also recall that it is not the developers, nor anyone else's responsiblity to inform everyone on all different projects of changes to the software, spam lists, or the like. You can watch this page and get an e-mail every time it is changed or sign up to one of the Mailing lists if you would like to receive information in that fashion. Cbrown1023talk 21:19, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Individual projects can set up whitelists to make exceptions for their particular projects -- for example, see en:MediaWiki talk:Spam-whitelist. I think this is very easy for an admin or your developer to establish since it's an option built into the MediaWiki software.

Slipstreaming. Unannounced software updates are an annoyance, but this doesn't seem to be behind this issue. My apologies for the irrelevant tangent.

You could watch this page. I currently watch over 3000 pages between en:WQ and en:WP. I'm sure I'm not the only person who is aware that (A) watching everything of interest leads to insufficent attention to anything; and (B) one cannot expect to watch pages that one doesn't know exist unless and until they affect one's work. I had never even heard of Spam Filter until it hit me in the face.

Spam-whitelist. It is absurd to modify a MediaWiki support page (which only admins can do anyway) just be able to include a questionable URL in a discussion. But thanks for letting me know anyway, as it may be of use for other reasons.

All 700 wikis. I'm sorry; I missed the interwiki conference where designated representatives from all 700 wikis agreed to this spam filter and duly communicated it to their projects, along with appointing someone who would deal with configuration changes requested on each project. Or was this feature created by a staff of conscientious but overworked developers who were answering a call from several busy, spam-plagued projects, thought it would be a good idea for everyone, and simply implemented it everywhere? (Okay, I concede most would happily accept this. But when you've got no active developers and many months of backlogged work, each new obstacle is a royal pain.)

Editing others' comments... is only six characters and is a necessity. It violates the principle of keeping one's mitts off others' postings, and as a sysop I set an example for the community whether I want to or not, so I take it very seriously. But I concede this is probably the simplest solution, and I don't want to create unreasonable work for the folks that make this whole wiki world possible.

Despite the grousing, I do appreciate the information, and believe I have what I need to get the job done. Thank you all for your help and your considerate responses to my somewhat testy posts. ~ Jeff Q(talk) 00:33, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm sorry to hear you so disturbed, Jeff, and generally I agree with you on badness of modification of other editors, even the URL in question is merely a spam. "why do you have such a huge problem with editings others' comments?" said on the above, it is a problem of ethics in my opinion. You step beyond a moral hazard. It is YoIt is under GFDL so legally allowed, but in most of country Copyright Law assured people to be properly assigned their words to their identification. So I am surprised you think it simply okay. Copyright infringement is not only c&p-ing others' quote. Unremarked alteration is also considered in the copyright infringement, and not only copyright infringement but it could be considered libel due to wrong attribution. So I am afraid you guys take it too simply and superficial. And this kind of sensitivity is strongly required to keep and maintain quote repository, so I think this feeling is shared by Wikiquote community, not only by English one, but also other sisters.

Once I modified my own comment simply from the same reason, and I was very unpleasant. I am afraid you haven't been understood why, but wrong attribution, specially without showing who you are and why explicitly, you break both law and moral.

And "For many Wikiyears?" here I found wrong information. Please do not give an advice about what you don't know well. It could be the whitelist implemented on the MediaWiki, but on Wikimedia project it hadn't been used until the late 2006. Check the page you showed, the first edit was done on October 2006, when it was activated. It is a bad behavoir to give wrong information to local sysops in trouble, specially to advocate your argument. I don't know if you are on a good faith or on a bad faith, but simply this kind of wrong assertion is unwelcome. It doesn't help discussion following the right course, but tend to lead it to the wrong direction. Aphaia 01:26, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

"For many Wikiyears" -- I was referring to the blacklist, not the whitelist. In re-reading my comments, I see that I was unclear. --A. B.(talk) 02:14, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your clarification, so it was around years, while we can still argue if it is many enough to be called so ;) This kind of subjective description is not helpful anyway. --Aphaia 02:31, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Aphaia, I respect you greatly, but that comment you just made upsets me greatly. Cbrown1023talk 01:34, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

As far as the whitelist is concerned, I believe they were referring to the local whitelist on each wiki. You guys have one, at http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Spam-whitelist , the similar page for the english wiki can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Spam-whitelist . That as far as I know has been around since the blacklist has been around. This list is designed to be used for spam, and has been used for that purpose for over 2 years now, see some of the spam that this list has stopped: [233], [234], [235], [236], [237], and more. If you have ideas on how to prevent that type of spam without a global blacklist I am all ears, but this solution has been working for over 2 years now. As far as the copyright stuff goes, I would be asking Brion, or a real lawyer, rather then just guessing about this stuff. ;) Eagle 101 01:43, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Futhermore, as I told Jeff on his talk page at quote, I normally wouldn't condone editing others comments, but in this case it needs to be done. Anyway, the http:// is only used there as a technicality and probably wouldn't be used outside of it, and would, therefore, not be altering the content of the comment or "quote". Since you compared editing others' comments to quotes, I feel I can do thse same thing. You state that cutting and pasting quotes (i.e. changing their apperance) is against the law. But Wikiquote is totally based upon re-formatting and showing quotes in a new way, normally they are spoken or written in a book, and by presenting them on a website, we are changing their appearance as well. If you follow that logic, we would have to eliminate Wikiquote altogether because we make changes like that all the time, which obviously isn't right. Cbrown1023talk 02:30, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Cbrown1023, if we cite a quote to a academic paper, we are expected to remark which emphasis had was made by the original author and which by the paper's author, orthography is modified or not etc. Or you might take a risk to be considered you altered the text fittable for your argument. In the real life sometimes the requirement to keep the text with its format as same as it exists could be so severe. --Aphaia 02:45, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

It was my fault to make the argument unclear; "c&p quotes", I meant, mainly types happened on Wikipedia, as if it were contributors' original. But c&p quotes could be copyright violation in some circumstances; I would remind you why French Wikiquote closed. They were claimed some of their content had beenwas c&ped from other quote website. Other type concerns may be found at "Holy Grail" ... (I hope it remains still concerns, not a real and serious issue though...) Aphaia 02:38, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Aphaia raises interesting points. However, I think it's easy to confuse two different aspects here. On the one hand, we regularly edit article content without concern because we agree that the content is not ours to keep, that we are only contributing, and that our contributions are noted in the article edit history. (I'm fairly sure this goes well beyond any copyright requirements anywhere, because MediaWiki is one of the few media where one can actually examine each and every character contributed by a person. Surely no nation has a copyright law so restrictive that it isn't satisfied by a general crediting in a bibliographic page for contributions to the entire work. We can show every bit for each article.)

But that's not the issue here. As Aphaia says, we're talking about discussion pages, where posters actually sign their comments, and editing them makes it look like they said something else. Adding missing signatures and even some minor reformatting doesn't materially affect the content (although I can see counter-arguments), but removing or striking material appears to the subsequent readers as if the person wrote the redacted material, which isn't true. One can examine the history to see this is not the case, but one also cannot fault a poster for feeling violated.

To dodge the spam filter, I can probably do the following without too much harm:

For bare links (e.g., [238]), I can nowiki and perhaps parenthesize the link, which communicates the address without providing a clickable entry. (This is no different from a citation of the material in a pure-text work, as it would have no way to provide a clickable hyperlink.)

In either case, after having looked at the result from the points of view of a new reader and the original poster, I feel compelled to insert a bracketed, italicized editor's note at the earliest possible point in the text, as is often done in professional publications, to make clear what has been done. This may still be controversial, but does the least violence to the passage while avoiding the filter, and follows a common, recognizable publishing-industry practice.

One remaining problem is a labelled URL (e.g., this discussion), where the text doesn't show the URL, just provides a hyperlink. The URL must be made available. Nowiki'ing it could be done like this:

[http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Spam_blacklist#en:Wikiquote_problems this discussion]

But this changes the reading experience. In fact, it makes the original poster look like they don't know how to create a proper labelled link. Even an editorial comment seems inadequate here. This is the kind of link that caused me to stop my work and come here for answers.

But on the practical side, I belatedly realized that the link in question was my own post in a discussion. (This is what happens to your brain when you manually reformat 700 deletion discussion in a short period.) As the original poster, I've decided that I care more about passing the spam filter than presenting the original reading experience, so I give myself permission to change it!

This specific example turned out not to be a problem, but the general one remains. I hope that the developers will consider this problem and how we might fix or avoid it in the future. Thanks to everyone for their comments! ~ Jeff Q(talk) 04:31, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

I am going to note something here, if you look at the edit page of a talk page on en:wikiquotes, like here, you will see a phrase at the bottom of the edit box that looks something like this:

If you do not want your contribution to be edited mercilessly and redistributed at will, do not submit it.

Thats on the talk page, if there are issues with this wording, it needs to be talked about elsewhere, I don't think the talk page of the spam blacklist is the correct location for this. I'm not saying changing what one says is "ok" but, the simple breaking of a link (such as http:// www.badlink.com), or the simple removal of the http:// (like www.badlink.com) is far less of an evil then the spammers (and spam) that this list was designed to stop. Eagle 101 17:12, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Eagle, I was wondering when someone was gonna bring that up. :) I wasn't going to because I thought that I had beaten the issue to death already. Cbrown1023talk 17:16, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

CSS code causing a hit

I recently tried to submit an error to w:Wikipedia talk:AutoWikiBrowser. As the error resulted in a fair amount of exception code, I posted this along with the report in case they needed it. To avoid cluttering up the page, I put it in an overflow section. However when I submitted it, the filter blocked it with the text cited being "overflow: auto; " and "height:" joined together (obviously I couldn't put it together as it would also trigger the filter. Surely this cannot be. Harryboyles 10:28, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Talk:Reparative therapy

This is a talk page. Please respect the talk page guidelines, and remember to sign your posts using four tildes (~~~~).

The spam filter blocked your page save because it detected a blacklisted hyperlink. You may have added it yourself, the link may have been added by another editor before it was blacklisted, or you may be infected by spyware that adds links to wiki pages. You will need to remove all instances of the blacklisted URL before you can save.

You can request help removing the link, request that the link be removed from the blacklist, or report a possible error on the Spam blacklist talk page. If you'd like to allow a particular link without removing similar links from the blacklist, you can request whitelisting on the Spam whitelist talk page.

(Note that in the above, I had to change the URL of the blacklisted text so I could post it here) After, I tried searching the text and found nothing. I copied all the text to my word processor, searched, found nothing. Please help. Thank you! Joie de Vivre 18:51, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

I found the links and "broke" them -- the page is editable now. --A. B.(talk) 19:04, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Thank you! Is this something that I, a standard editor, can do or learn to do? Joie de Vivre 19:10, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Sure -- Look at what I did. I just made sure there was not a complete, uninterrupted URL. I got rid of the http://www. part.

Alternately, you could just put a spaces after the http:// and the www; a human can still interpret the link but browsers and MediaWiki software can't:

Blacklisted links often aren't very useful -- in such a case, just delete the link. I did not have the time to evaluate these links; we're less picky about link quality on talk pages. --A. B.(talk) 21:13, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

StormBringer

I tried to put some code on the wiki in spanish but a message appeared that states that is black listed. This is part of the code:

www.xs4all.nl/~wichm

There has been major vandalism to a featured article (Kinetoscope) involving the wholesale deletion of an entire top-level heading. I can't revert this edit because apparently this link in the original text exists. I am 100% certain it is not spam. As this article is likely to be on the front page soon, could this please be dealt with immediately so as to restore the featured article to its original text ASAP? Thanks, 82.35.33.45 (Girolamo Savonarola on en) 11:18, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

If you are referring to the English Wikipedia article, it appears that this problem has been fixed.[240] --A. B.(talk) 14:02, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Removed from article, it was not necessary. As for not being spam, it appears it was wherever else it was added (see [241]). "At least one website picked this up" in a ref which included a proper source suggests that perhaps it was. Just zis Guy, you know? 16:59, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

jewsdidwtc.com

Following a recent mention of the jewsdidwtc.com website and a slideshow of images from that website on notable news source CNN, I think that continued blacklisting of jewsdidwtc.com prevents a relevant reference from being discussed on the issue of media integrity. See en:JewsDidWTC. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by216.15.119.166 (talk • contribs) 6 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm not finding this a very compelling argument. I wouldn't remove it.++Lar: t/c 20:40, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

If a compelling case could be made then it could be locally whitelisted but no compelling case has been made and a recent attempt to have the article on the website undeleted failed by a large margin. I can't see any legitimate encyclopaedic use of this sie other than in an article on the site, given the self-admitted trolling nature of the content. Just zis Guy, you know? 14:49, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Looking at the AFD discussion, the article's not going to be around much longer. Dave6 09:31, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Question on what is acceptable

Should a domain be added on one wiki by say 4 IPs (on four seperate ranges), is this acceptable to add to the spam blacklist? Or should we be reserving this for only cross wiki spam? Either way is fine by me, but if its the latter (cross wiki only) we should update the header of this page from:

This section is for proposing that a website be blacklisted; add new entries at the bottom of the section, using the basic URL so that there is no link (google.ca, not http://www.google.ca). Provide links demonstrating widespread spamming by multiple users. Completed requests will be marked as done or denied and archived.

to

This section is for proposing that a website be blacklisted; add new entries at the bottom of the section, using the basic URL so that there is no link (google.ca, not http://www.google.ca). Provide links demonstrating widespread spamming on multiple wikis. Completed requests will be marked as done or denied and archived.

I think it can be for one wiki only. Either that, or we need individual blacklists by wiki. By the way, I think "by multiple users" should be modified to "multiple accounts".

Note that there are cases where en:WP:IAR apply (IAR is policy on 15 other Wikipedias as well). For instance, some spammers may spam only one domain to one article, but they are so persistent (or vandalistic when confronted) that the only other alternative is to permanently protect or semi-protect an article, something some wikis won't do. See Talk:Spam blacklist/Archives/2007/01#middlesell.com for one extreme example. Likewise, I think anytime a spambot or open proxy is used, it's worth blacklisting at first sight.--A. B.(talk) 15:56, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

List_of_nicknames_of_European_Royalty_and_Nobility

I tried to add a link to the 'List of Treaty Titles for Monarchs' page on this page, but the update failed due to a link I didn't include (to an elzibethtudor site) how should I address the 'blacklisting after linking' that apparently happened, and how do I get my link added? I'm user Bo on wikipedia.

Depending on the nature of the link you can:

Remove the offending link

Replace the offending link by a URL in text

Ask on your Wikipedia for whitelisting or here for removal from the blacklist.

Robert Saxon

This page can't be edited - but I'm not clever enough to work out why. Suggest it be removed from blacklisting - all I wanted to do was add a flag to say that it looked like a fan site and needed attention. Thanks Testbed 10:22, 22 January 2007 (UTC)testbed

All you have to do is remove the link from the article, and you should be able to save. The software even points out what link is the problem The following text is what triggered our spam filter: blah. Hope this helps, Cheers! Eagle 101 00:32, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks (I'm on Time Warner and I don't know if there is a I.P issue) 68.175.68.54 02:52, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Weird. I logged in and I'm getting an I.P. for my sig. 68.175.68.54 02:56, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

The system has definitely blown up. The messages are major league wierd. I'm logged in but nuked at Time Warner.68.175.68.54 02:57, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Done - Problem fixed. You had a blacklisted link in your sandbox (http:// www.suite101.com). See what I did to fix it. You will need to remove that reference and find a different one, and or request that that particular page of www.suite101.com be permitted (see the english whitelist. (I would try to find a different reference, but the choice is up to you). Eagle 101 04:40, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

blog dot myspace dot com

This came up in a recent talk thread on WP:RS, apparently this being blacklisted prevents linking to official company / product blogs which would otherwise be acceptable as primary sources. Is this url actually being used for spam, or is the blacklist being (inappropriately IMO, as it's the spam blacklist not the WP:V blacklist) used to enforce an interpretation of WP:RS? --Random832 19:38, 12 February 2007 (UTC) The edit summary says "requested by Jimbo" but there is no link to the request in the log. --Random832 21:20, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

This has already been talked over here. If you want to revive the disucssion, please do so in the correct section (items to be removed from the blacklist) Cheers! Eagle 101 22:24, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

The problem was not on the Susan Steinberg article, it was the 404 maintenance page listed in this section header. I fixed it by trial and error. The spam block does not offer any assitance in finding the blacklisted link at all, and there were hundreds and hundreds of links on the page..... (it is a maintenance collection of external links that come up with 404 error)... So I used half-splitting and trial and error to isolate it... I had hoped there was an easier way (IE: a log or something) that would have made that easier. B ut it is okay now. Thanks. Jerry lavoie 22:28, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

typo?

Is bkuso\.cc a typo on the blacklist? maybe suppose to be \bkuso\.cc? or just no b infront of it? (the site is kuso\.cc) --Versageek 09:23, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

I fixed it based on the fact that it is a typo. Eagle 101 16:06, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

WT?

Can someone explain to me why I am being blocked by the spam filter from reverting simple vandalisms at en:Ottoman Empire[242]? For which web-site? And which of the web-sites there is "spam"?? What is the criteria for inclusion in this list? If anyone can add any link they like, it is nothing but an invitation for disruption, right? If possible, it would be nice if someone can look into this soon since the vandalism is still there... Baristarim 22:13, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

It has been fixed, someone spammed (see here) the following link "simone-numismatica-e-storia.blogspot.com/2007/02/una-piccola-moneta-racconta.html". This link was spammed on multiple wikis, (see report here). The only way to stop it was for a meta admin to blacklist the link, thereby making it impossible to save pages with that link in it. This stops the spamming, but it also has the side effect of preventing page saves. The criteria for being added to the list is mainly unmanageable spam, that can't be handled with normal admin tools. This includes cross wiki spam, which is exatly what happened with that link. I hope I have made this clearer for you, Cheers! Eagle 101 22:26, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Slight trouble

I'm having a problem on the reverting of the Dodge Hornet article at the english wikipedia (I am The Helper S there), it won't let me delete the unessecary caption next to the first external link, can somebody fix this? I want it fixed because I can't edit from the page....and the caption is still there. 71.165.145.146 03:04, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Problem with overflow

Thanks for the help. By swapping the parameters, the code gets accepted, but still doesn't have the desired effect. Will have to try some other intelligent hack around it. — Ambuj Saxena (☎) 06:36, 18 February 2007 (UTC)